Hazards of Time Travel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  On one of the screens there was a blinding flash. The boy with the mustache on his upper lip—ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY—was slammed sideways as if he’d been struck with a laser ray, that entered the side of his head like liquid fire, exploded and devoured his head, and then his torso and lower body, in less than three seconds.

  What was left of ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY fell to the floor, slithering and phosphorescent, and by quick degrees this, too, vanished . . . I had a glimpse of the other Patriot Scholars staring in horror at their TV screens before all four screens went dark and a roaring in my ears became deafening.

  When I woke from a sick, dead faint, I was being lifted from my chair. Yet so terrified still, I didn’t dare to open my eyes.

  Exile: Zone 9

  “Adriane. I am your Youth Disciplinary Counsel.”

  She was a woman of about Mom’s age. Her face was shiny and glaring, so that I could barely look at her. Or maybe my vision had become oversensitive from the previous day’s interrogations in blazing light.

  Her name was S. Platz. Her manner was almost jovial, as if she and I shared a joke.

  “Try to lift your head and look at me, dear. As if you have nothing to hide. We are being ‘surveyed’ and videotaped—you must know.”

  After the terror I’d been feeling, and the hopelessness, S. Platz was so astonishing to me, I couldn’t at first believe her; I was sure that she must be another torturer. Each time I closed my eyes I saw ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY struck down like an animal—or an “enemy” figure in a video game.

  I would never forget that horrific sight, I thought.

  I would never want to forget, for the executed boy’s sake.

  S. Platz, unlike the other interrogators, did not continue to ask me the same questions, and she did not speak in a brisk impersonal voice.

  She asked one of the uniformed officers to unshackle me—both my wrists and my ankles. She asked if my wrists and ankles hurt, and if I was “very tired” and would like to “sleep an uninterrupted sleep” in a real bed—to help with “healing.”

  Almost inaudibly I said Yes.

  (Wondering if “uninterrupted sleep” meant something terrible?)

  But S. Platz seemed so kindly! Tears flooded my eyes, I was so grateful for her sympathy.

  Yes thank you. Oh yes—I would like to sleep . . .

  “I have good news for you, Adriane. Youth Disciplinary has ruled that the discipline for your violation of the federal statutes is—Exile.”

  Exile! I had heard of Exile—of course. This form of discipline was often confused with Deletion because, so far as anyone knew, including the families of Exiled Individuals, the Exiled Individual simply—vanished.

  It was said to be highly experimental, and dangerous. Exiled Individuals were teletransported—every molecule in their bodies dissolved, to be reconstituted elsewhere. (No one who was left behind knew where. A colony on another planet? This was a prevailing rumor, according to Roddy. But which planet? If any had been colonized by the Government, ordinary citizens knew nothing about it.) But often, the teletransportation failed, and individuals were injured, incapacitated, killed, or, in effect, “vaporized”—and no one ever saw them again.

  Only if the Exiled Individual reappeared, years later, after having served out his sentence, could it be assumed that he had been alive all the while, but in a remote place. EIs were generally allowed to live but had to submit to a process of “Re-education” and “Reconstitution.”

  Exile was considered to be the “humane”—“liberal”—disciplinary measure, appropriate for younger people who had not committed the most serious crimes—yet.

  In our Patriot Social Studies class we were taught that the “Re-educated” and “Reconstituted” individual, successfully having completed his sentence of Exile and returned to the present time, designated EI1, was often an outstanding Citizen-Patriot; several notable EI1’s had been named to federal posts in Homeland Security Public Safety Oversight and Epidemic Control; and the most renowned of EI1’s had risen to a high-ranking executive post in the Capitol, as an assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Interrogation.

  There were rumors that the president was himself an EI1—a former “traitor”-genius now totally converted to NAS and its democratic tradition.

  S. Platz was saying: “Your case was carefully adjudicated, Adriane, after several of your teachers entered pleas for you. Their claim was that you are ‘naïve’—‘very young’—‘not subversive’—and ‘not radical’—and that, if you are separated from the influence of your MI-father and are allowed to Re-educate yourself, you would be of value to society. Therefore, we are transporting you to Zone Nine. There, you will attend an excellent four-year university to train yourself in a socially useful profession. Teaching is strongly suggested. Or, if your science grades are good, you would be allowed to apply to medical school. Zone Nine is not so ‘urban’ as our Eastern zones, nor is it so ‘rural’ as most of our North-Midwest zones. It is not on any NAS map—it is a place that ‘exists’ only by way of special access, for, in our present time, in the North-Midwest States that now encompass what was known as ‘Wisconsin’ in the era of Zone Nine, things are very different.” Seeing that I was looking confused and frightened, S. Platz said, “You need not concern yourself with any of this, Adriane—you will simply be transported to the university in Zone Nine, where you will be a ‘freshman.’ You will be given a new, abbreviated identity. You will be, as you are, seventeen years old. And your name will be ‘Mary Ellen Enright.’ If necessary, when you return to us your training can be brought up-to-date. Everything that you need to know is explained in The Instructions, which I will give you now.”

  Though S. Platz spoke clearly I was having difficulty understanding. Badly wanting to ask But can I see my parents again? Just once before I am sent away . . .

  S. Platz handed me a sheet of paper stiff as parchment. When I tried to read it, however, my eyes filled with moisture, and lost focus.

  “So there is really no need to ask me questions—is there?”

  S. Platz paused, smiling at me.

  And now I saw that the counsel’s steel-colored eyes were not smiling, but only just staring, and assessing.

  The realization came to me—If I don’t react properly, I will be vaporized on the spot. The woman has this power.

  With a numb smile I managed to murmur Thank you!

  And not a word about my parents. Or the life I would be leaving—the life to which I would be “lost.”

  II

  Zone 9

  The Happy Place

  She was a strange girl. At first, we didn’t like her.

  She never smiled at us. Her face was like a mask. She prayed on her knees—we’d seen her! She cried herself to sleep every night like us, only worse.

  We were all homesick, our first semester at Wainscotia. Missed our parents and our families so! But this girl was sad in a way we weren’t—like her heart was broken. And she would not be comforted—which does not seem natural.

  We were Christian girls, mostly Protestant. We attended chapel on Sundays. (She never did—we noticed that.) We believed in prayer—seriously!

  We believed in helping one another. We believed in smiling-through-tears. You cried, and then you laughed—you opened a box of brownies your mom had sent to you, to share with your roommates, or anyone who showed up in the room.

  You cried, and wiped away your tears—and you were yourself again.

  She was the girl who scorned our mothers’ brownies, and scorned the opportunity to walk with us to class on the steep-hilly sidewalks leading into the campus, who almost never came with us to the dining hall and sat with us. She’d gone to freshman orientation alone, and slipped away alone. The only girl in Acrady Cottage who didn’t participate in Vesper Song.

  Probably the only person in the freshman class who claimed she’d “lost” her green-and-purple freshman beanie. Who paid no heed to upperclassmen ordering her to “step out of the way, frosh”�
�stared through them as if she didn’t see them and kept walking in her stiff-hunched way like a sleepwalker you pitied and would not want to waken.

  The girl-with-no-name we called her. For if you called out a cheery Hi there, Mary Ellen!—she didn’t seem to hear, or to register the name, even as she quickened her pace hurrying away.

  We knew little about her. But we knew that she was a scholarship girl, like us.

  Acrady Cottage was a residence for freshman scholarship girls—meaning that most of us couldn’t have afforded Wainscotia State except for financial aid and part-time jobs on campus.

  (She had a part-time job in the geology library.)

  Scholarship girls were thrifty girls! Most of our textbooks were used—some of them pretty badly battered.

  We wore hand-me-down clothes and clothes sewn by our mothers or grandmothers—or by us.

  Quite a few of us were 4-H girls. We were three Wisconsin State Fair blue-ribbon winners, in Acrady Cottage.

  Acrady wasn’t a residence hall like the ivy-covered stone buildings elsewhere on campus—it was just a house, plain weathered-gray shingle board, where freshman girls lived who could not afford to live anywhere else.

  But Acrady Cottage had spirit!

  At Vesper Song, Acrady excelled though we were one of the smaller residences on campus—twenty-two girls.

  Twenty-two girls including “Mary Ellen”—the girl who kept to herself like someone in quarantine.

  First week at Wainscotia we were all homesick. But trying to be cheerful—“friendly.”

  Not her—“Mary Ellen Enright.”

  She’d avoid us if she could. Her own roommates!—that isn’t easy.

  Four of us in the third-floor room. Cramped space and just two (dormer) windows.

  She’d taken the bed that was farthest, in a corner. And her desk jutted out from the wall, to partially hide the bed from the rest of the room. No window in that corner.

  She’d shrink from us. Trying to smile—a weird bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  And then, when she thought we were asleep and wouldn’t see her, on her knees in the corner, praying.

  And crying herself to sleep.

  She looked like someone who has traveled a long journey and has not fully recovered.

  We’d wondered—Is she foreign?

  But what kind of foreign?

  Even the way she spoke was strange. If you cornered her to say hello and ask how she was and she couldn’t escape or avoid answering she would stammer a reply that was almost—but not quite—intelligible. We could recognize in her speech the rhythms and vowel-sounds of English, so if we didn’t exactly know what she was saying, we could guess.

  And she spoke so fast and nervous! Like none of the other girls of Acrady Cottage.

  Of course, we were all from the Midwest. Most of us from Wisconsin. Where Mary Ellen was from was—one of the eastern states, we’d been told. Evidently people talked faster there.

  Our part of the U.S., it’s generally known as the Happy Place. (Midwest!) And Wainscotia is a very special university at the heart of the Happy Place.

  This girl Mary Ellen, we had to wonder: Was she a Christian?

  Was she—Jewish?

  None of us from Wisconsin had ever seen a Jewish person, before coming to Wainscotia. But there were Jewish people here—professors, it was said, as well as students. A few.

  There was even a Jewish fraternity, and there was a Jewish sorority. So they could live with their own kind. This was amazing to us!

  In large cities in Wisconsin, like Milwaukee, and Madison, there were Jewish people—we knew that. But we were mostly from upstate Wisconsin, or rural counties. German, Scandinavian, Scots and Irish backgrounds—and English of course.

  Also, “Mary Ellen” did not look like us. This was difficult to explain, but we all agreed. Her hair was darkish blond, spiky like it hadn’t been combed or brushed properly; never curled or waved, and not washed often enough. It needed cutting, and trimming. And she went to bed without hairpins or rollers. Ever.

  Didn’t do anything for her hair. Didn’t even seem to recognize what rollers were!

  (Like she didn’t seem to know how a phone worked—the way you dial with your forefinger. Of all of us in Acrady Cottage, only Mary Ellen would shrink from answering the phone when it rang near her, so we had to wonder—was it possible her family didn’t own a telephone?)

  (And she didn’t smoke! And was forever coughing from our cigarette smoke—coughing in fits, until her eyes watered—though she never complained as you’d have expected a nonsmoker to complain. You could see the misery in her face but it was what you’d call long-suffering misery.)

  She might have been pretty—almost—except she never wore lipstick. A guy looking at her would look right past her, there was so little to catch the male eye. (We all wore red—very red—lipstick!) She didn’t even pluck her eyebrows which is about the least a girl can do, to make herself attractive.

  She looked like a convalescent. Some wasting disease that left her skinny, and her skin ashy-pale and sort of grainy as if it would be rough to the touch like sandpaper. Her eyes would have been beautiful eyes—they were dark-brown, like liquid chocolate—with thick lashes—but they were likely to be narrowed and squinting as if she were looking into a bright, blinding light. And she did not look you in the eye—like a guilty person.

  Along with not smoking, she also didn’t eat potato chips, glazed doughnuts, Cheez-bits, M&M’s, and those little cellophane bags of Planters peanuts that were our favorite snacks while we were studying, that left salt all over our fingers. She didn’t eat any kind of chewy meat like beef or pork or even chicken, sometimes. She’d eat fish casseroles.

  Which was why she was so skinny. Flat-chested, and her hips flat, like a guy’s, she didn’t have to struggle into girdles like the rest of us.

  Didn’t even know what a “girdle” was—just stared at Trishie’s when she was getting dressed for a frat party, like she’d never seen anything so scary!

  Scholarship girls in Acrady Cottage studied, hard. We worked long hours at our desks for we had to retain B averages or lose our scholarships. But Mary Ellen Enright worked harder, and longer than any of us—so far as we knew, Mary Ellen did almost nothing else except her schoolwork, and her part-time job in the geology library!

  At her desk with her back to the room, and to her roommates, she was unnaturally still, concentrated upon her work motionless as a mannequin but so tense, you could see the tension in her neck and shoulders.

  As if she was holding back a scream, or a sob.

  Yet she remained at her desk, with the crook-necked lamp shining a halo of light onto the desktop, for as long as she could endure it—if none of her roommates objected to the light.

  (At first we did not object. We had no trouble sleeping with a single light on in the room. But as time passed, and we grew less patient with our misfit-roommate, we did object, and Mary Ellen took her work downstairs to the work-study lounge where she would disturb no one, and no one would disturb her. And sometimes she slept there, on a couch. And we did not have to hear her sob herself to sleep!)

  It was hard to say what was wrong with Mary Ellen. The way she’d stare at us, and look away—like she’d seen something scary—made us think there was something wrong with us.

  We hoped (sort of) that she would drop out of school. Or transfer. This was cruel of us, and not very Christian—we were not proud of such thoughts. But we were girls who’d only just graduated from high school a few months before and maybe Mary Ellen scared us, so close to the edge. Close to mental and physical collapse as we’d sometimes felt ourselves away from home for the first time and at the University of Wisconsin–Wainscotia where 9,400 students were enrolled.

  A certain percentage of freshmen dropped out in the first several weeks of their first semester at Wainscotia. You’d hear of someone—mostly girls, but there were boys, too—who just “broke down”—“couldn’t sleep”—“
cried all the time”—“felt lost.”

  But Mary Ellen seemed determined not to be one of these. She was deeply unhappy and seemed to us—(to some of us, at least)—on the verge of a nervous collapse but there was something willful about her—like a cripple who doesn’t seem to know she’s a cripple, or a stutterer who doesn’t seem to know that she’s a stutterer.

  Another strange thing: alone among the girls of Acrady Cottage Mary Ellen Enright received no mail.

  And yet stranger: Mary Ellen Enright seemed to expect no mail, for she walked by the mailboxes without glancing at her own.

  We asked our resident adviser Miss Steadman what she thought we could do to make Mary Ellen less lonely and Miss Steadman suggested leaving her alone for the time being, for “Mary Ellen” had traveled a long distance—from one of the eastern states like New York, New Jersey or Massachusetts—and was feeling a more acute homesickness than we were feeling, whose families lived in the state and whom we could visit on weekends by bus.

  Is “Mary Ellen” Jewish? we asked.

  Miss Steadman said she did not think so. For “Enright” was not known to be a Jewish name.

  But she seems like she’s from—somewhere else. Like she’s not an American—sort of.

  Miss Steadman frowned at this remark which clearly she did not like.

  Miss Steadman would tell us only that Mary Ellen Enright was the sole resident of Acrady Cottage whose complete file hadn’t been made available to her, as our resident adviser. She’d received a file from the office of the dean of women for Mary Ellen but it was very short, and some of it had been blotted out with black ink.

  Hilda McIntosh described how in the first week of classes she’d come into her room on the third floor one afternoon—and there was her roommate Mary Ellen Enright standing in front of Hilda’s desk staring at her typewriter.

  This was Hilda’s portable Remington typewriter, one of her proudest possessions which she’d brought to college. Not everyone in Acrady Cottage had a typewriter, and those who didn’t were envious of Hilda!